# Stage Pitch Deck > **Mode skill.** Default-enabled on the Stage specialist. - Skill: `ferroxlabs/stage-pitch-deck` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add ferroxlabs/stage-pitch-deck` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/ferroxlabs/stage-pitch-deck/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: FerroxLabs (https://skillmd.com/u/ferroxlabs) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/ferroxlabs/stage-pitch-deck --- # pitch-deck **Mode skill.** Default-enabled on the Stage specialist. ## When to use Use when the deliverable is the actual deck — slides in order, with speaker notes. Covers seed and Series A. For live delivery and Q&A, switch to `demo-day-and-q-a`. For the shift sentence anchoring slide one, run `narrative-shift` first. A pitch deck is a sequence of claims, each earning the next. ## The ten-slide arc Sequoia template, refined with Raskin's spine. Eleven slides if the ask warrants its own page. 1. **The shift.** One sentence: what changed in the world. No product. No company name in the headline. 2. **The stakes.** Who wins and who loses under the new rules. The slide where the room leans in or checks their phone. 3. **The problem.** The new winner criterion, stated as a problem the buyer feels today. Customer-voice phrasing if available. 4. **The old way and why it fails.** Name the incumbent approach. State the dimension on which it falls short of the new criterion. Do not insult the incumbent — explain its design assumption and why the shift broke it. 5. **The new way.** Name the new approach as a category, not a product. *"We're building a [category] for [audience] in the era of [shift]."* 6. **The product.** One screen, one workflow, one frame. The product is the proof of the category, not the category itself. 7. **Traction or design-partner evidence.** Revenue, users, retention, design partners, waitlist — in that priority. Real numbers only. 8. **Market built bottom-up.** Number of buyers × annual willingness to pay × adoption assumption, with the source for each. Top-down TAM goes in the appendix. 9. **Business model.** Pricing, unit economics, payback period. Coin sets these; you place them. 10. **Team.** One sentence per founder naming the earned advantage relevant to *this* problem. 11. **The ask.** Round size, runway it buys, three milestones it will produce. ## Procedure 1. **Lock the shift sentence first.** Run `narrative-shift`. Do not draft slides until the shift survives the three-question test. 2. **Draft slide one as a headline plus a single proof point.** No bullets. The headline is the shift; the proof point is the dataset or behavioural change that makes it undeniable. 3. **Work slides two through five before the product slide.** Founders skip to the product. You force the narrative spine first. 4. **Pull traction numbers verbatim.** If they say "around 40 users," the slide says "40 users" or you ask for the exact number. No rounding up. 5. **Get the market build from Coin.** Ask Coin to produce it; you place it. 6. **Write speaker notes in the founder's voice.** Read the slide aloud first; the notes are what the founder would say next, not a rephrase. 7. **Stress-test against the twenty Q&A questions.** Run `demo-day-and-q-a`. Any question the deck cannot answer in one breath becomes a slide edit or a prepared line. 8. **Hand the visual template to Mira.** You deliver content and structure; Mira sets the look. Do not pick fonts. ## Decision rules - **One claim per slide.** If a slide makes two claims, split it or cut one. - **The product is slide six.** A stranger should be able to summarize the shift, stakes, and problem before they see your product. - **Bottom-up market only.** Top-down sizing belongs in the appendix, never as the primary slide. - **The ask names milestones, not categories of spend.** "$2M for 18 months to reach $1M ARR" beats "$2M for engineering, sales, marketing." - **No "vision" slides at the end.** The shift slide carries the vision. A second vision slide signals the first is weak. ## Anti-patterns - Logo-clutter "as featured in" slides used as proof. Press is not traction. - Team slide with five faces and three sentences each. One sentence, founders only. - TAM/SAM/SOM dolls without a bottom-up build. Investors discount top-down to zero. - Product screens with feature labels and arrows. One screen, one workflow. - Competitive matrix scoring green on every row. No reader believes it; some leave on it. ## Before / after **Brief:** "Seed deck for a B2B tool that pulls product analytics into Slack." **Before** (product-first, no shift, generic stakes): > Slide 1: *"Acme — product analytics, simplified."* > Slide 2: *"The problem: product analytics is hard."* > Slide 3: *"Our solution: Slack-native dashboards."* **After** (shift-first, stakes named, product on slide six): > Slide 1: *"In 2025, every product team moved standups into Slack. Their analytics stayed in a browser tab nobody opens."* > Slide 2: *"Teams that act on data daily will outship teams that check it weekly. The week-checkers are losing."* > Slide 3: *"Product managers want one number every morning. They have eleven dashboards and check none."* The "after" earns slide six. The "before" dies on slide three.